You had to be there. As Americans took to the streets Saturday, defying a political order that, in Washington and many state capitals, has allowed extremists to write gun laws, the bodies — of both the dead and the living who marched in their honor — mattered a lot. Hundreds of thousands in cities big and small showed up. It was an extraordinary coming-out party for a movement that is now, at long last, undeniably mass.
The marches against gun violence would not have been as big without the undercurrent of rage that liberals, Democrats, good-government activists, racial minorities, ethical conservatives and others carry through daily life under U.S. President Donald Trump's regime. And they wouldn't have been as big without the cathartic breakthroughs of #MeToo and the Women's March that preceded them.
The confluence of those forces — opposing sexism, racism, corruption — into the March for Our Lives is only the latest confirmation of how spectacularly the National Rifle Association has gone awry. As one handwritten poster in Los Angeles, drawing on the slogan against sexist exploitation in Hollywood, stated: "Hey NRA Time's Up."